Not My Buddy: Well . . . . All Right

Last week I was telling my friend John Sellards that I had planned to do my Second Week Special on Buddy Holly covers and he mentioned that he had just been listening to Blind Faith’s “Well . . . . All Right.” I responded that the Blind Faith cover was the inspiration for me to do this series, which by the way, concludes with this post.

This is one of the few Holly covers that I heard prior to hearing Buddy’s original version which was issued as the flipside of Holly’s solo single “Heartbeat.” The single had limited chart success as “Heartbeat” only made it to the #82 slot on the charts. “Well . . . . All Right” authorship is credited to all three of then current members of The Crickets along with Norman Petty.

In 1969, Steve Winwood and Blind Faith took “Well . . . . All Right” to a new direction and it sounds more like a Blind Faith original rather than a Holly cover – they truly made it their own with electric guitar, bass, drums, and piano – and a jazzy piano style at that. On the 1958 original, the instrumentation was sparse with Buddy playing an acoustic guitar,  Additionally, Jerry Allison doesn’t play drums on this cut – only his ride cymbal, while Joe B. Maudlin is where he always was – on the acoustic bass.